A Book of Monsters: Promethean Horror in Modern Literature and Culture
By (Author) David Ashford
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
18th September 2024
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Cultural studies
Philosophy: aesthetics
Theory of architecture
Horror and supernatural fiction
Fiction: Traditional stories, myths and fairy tales
Hardback
248
Width 138mm, Height 216mm
This books traces the rise to prominence in the twentieth-century of a sub-genre of gothic fiction that is, emphatically, a horror of enlightenment rationality rather than gothic darkness, examining post-modern revisions of Modernist Promethean tropes in an eclectic range of gothic, fantasy and SF writing. Whether the subject be terror of Londons churches in the psychogeographical fiction of Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, the Orcs in the linguistic fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien, King Kong, killer-computers, or demon-children in post-war British science-fiction, A Book of Monsters offers illuminating perspectives on the darker recesses of the post-modern imagination, setting out a compelling, and comprehensive, overview on our contemporary unconscious.
David Ashford is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the University of Groningen